Due to various genetic and/or developmental occurrences, including diseases, developmental irregularities, trauma, stress, and the like, one or more bones may require surgical intervention. To protect and/or aid in the recovery of one or more surgically repaired bones, such as a section of the spinal column, there are often situations wherein it is desirable to collectively restrict movement of one or more bones.
Today, immobilization of one or more bones in the human body may be achievable using one of a variety of surgically implantable support systems and methods. In general, one or more surgically-implantable rods are fixedly attached by threading one or more anchor screws to a bone, such as a pedicle of one or more vertebrae of the spinal column. Each anchor screw is in turn fixedly coupled to the implantation rod at proximate locations along its shaft.
In certain situations, it may be desirable to increase the support and/or torsional rigidity of the surgically-implantable implantation rod system. These situations may require not only support on the bone that is attached to an implantation rod, but also torsional rigidity and/or support collectively between implantation rods. In certain situations, such implantation rods may not be in an ideal positional relationship with respect to each other. For example, the implantation rods may have already been implanted in such a way that the implantation rods are not parallel with each other. As another example, there may be situations wherein a suitable implantation is one where the implantation rods are not in parallel with each other. In such situations, problems arise since conventional connectors between implantation rods generally require the implantation rods to be substantially parallel with each other in order to achieve a proper connection between the implantation rods. Conventional solutions to such problems generally require, among other things, one or more implantation rods to be precisely adjusted, such as by bending, so as to create a substantially parallel region for the connectors to be attached. It is recognized herein that such precise adjustments not only require customized adjustments, which can be very expensive and time-consuming, but may also affect the structural integrity of the implantation rod(s).